Studies in health technology and informatics
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Patient participation in decision making concerning nursing needs is an important aspect of high quality care, of interest for both planning and implementing care. However, patients' perspective on participation in clinical decision making has not been studied extensively and the literature is inconclusive of what roles patients prefer to adopt. The aim was to investigate associations between patient demographics and preferences for participation in clinical decision making and to compare patients and RNs perceptions of the patients' preferences for participation. ⋯ The findings showed that younger and more educated patients preferred to be more active in some aspects of decision making than older and less educated patients did. Further, in comparison with RNs inference of patient preferences for participation, patients preferred to be more passive in decision making in relation to nursing needs in general, as well as for physical and psychosocial needs. Differences in perceptions between patients and RNs concerning patient participation could hamper high quality care and need to be addressed.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2006
Integrating medical and genomic data: a successful example for rare diseases.
The recent advances on genomics and proteomics research bring up a significant grow on the information that is publicly available. However, navigating through genetic and bioinformatics databases can be a too complex and unproductive task for a primary care physician. In this paper we present diseasecard, a web portal for rare disease that provides transparently to the user a virtually integration of distributed and heterogeneous information.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2006
Nurses confronting sexual harassment in the medical environment.
Sexual harassment is an important and widespread public health problem, particularly for nurses who work in the medical environment. Some studies note that nursing is the profession with the highest rates of sexual harassment; however, few studies of sexual harassment of nurses in the medical workplace were found in Taiwan. Methodologically, a cross-sectional survey with a self-administered structured questionnaire was implemented for this study. ⋯ A total of 307 subjects were selected. The results show: (1) there are 175 subjects who experienced sexual harassment in medical practice, which is 57% of 307 sampled nurses; (2) the frequency of verbal sexual harassment (55.7%) is higher than non-verbal sexual harassment (40.1%) and physical sexual harassment (39.1%). The results of this study can provide information for the teaching hospitals and clinical instructors to help understand the prevalence and management strategies for nurses suffering from sexual harassment in the medical workplace.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2006
Intervertebral disc biomechanics in the pathogenesis of idiopathic scoliosis.
The aim of the present study is to investigate whether the deformation of the intervertebral disc contributes to the progression of idiopathic scoliotic curves. In the standing posteroanterior x-rays of 92 scoliotic curves the following readings were obtained: Cobb angle (CA), apical vertebral rotation (AVR), apical vertebral wedging (AVW) and the adjacent to the apical vertebra Upper (UIVDW) and Lower (LIVDW) InterVertebral Discs Wedging. The statistical analyses included inter - intraobserver reliability test, descriptives, monofactorial linear regression and Pearson correlation coefficient, with p<0.05 considered statistical significant (SS). ⋯ The eccentric intervertebral disc in the scoliotic spine, through variation in its water concentration produces asymmetrically cyclical load during the 24-hour period and an asymmetrical growth of the vertebral body (Hueter-Volkman's law). The statistical analysis revealed that AVW appears later when already CA increases, the IVDW is more important than AVW and the LIVDW, which is greater than UIVDW, is the most frequent correlated radiographic parameter. The deformation of the apical intervertebral disc seems to be an important contributory factor in the progression of a scoliotic curve.